We're not the stuffy lawyers you call when you get in trouble. We're business owners ourselves — and we work as active partners with Flathead Valley companies on the legal and strategic decisions that either compound over time, or cost you everything you've built.
Our business is to understand your business. We structure and pursue legal and business strategies that don't just prevent problems or maintain compliance — we help you advance what you actually came here to build.
Entities · Contracts · M&A · Succession · Disputes
Most small-business legal work is either free advice that's worth what you paid for it, or BigLaw hourly rates that price you out of getting the help you actually need. We built this practice to sit in the middle — business owners who happen to be lawyers, offering strategic counsel on the matters that decide whether a company grows or stalls.
We take clients from first day of formation through succession and sale. That continuity matters: the operating agreement you signed at the founding table becomes the document that governs every decision fifteen years later, and the contracts you signed last month become the evidence in litigation next year. Getting those documents right the first time is the highest-leverage legal spend a business makes.
A well-written contract is the cheapest insurance policy your business will ever buy. We'd rather spend two hours drafting the agreement than two hundred litigating it — and the math almost always proves that right.
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Managing Attorney · Business Practice Lead
Chad leads the firm's business practice — advising closely-held Flathead Valley companies from day-one formation through contracts, transactions, governance disputes, and the eventual sale or succession. Clients range from ranch operations and seasonal hospitality businesses to healthcare practices, construction outfits, and retail groups, and most of them stay with Chad for years because the advice is consistent, practical, and cost-aware. He is licensed throughout Montana and regularly works with CPAs, bankers, and out-of-state counsel on matters that involve Flathead Valley real estate or operations.
Most of our business clients are closely-held Flathead Valley companies — roughly one to a hundred employees — where the owners make the decisions and the owners bear the consequences. We also serve established boards and multi-owner companies that need strategic counsel without a full-time general counsel in the building.
We handle flat-fee formation, operating agreements, and the governance documents that decide every future dispute before it starts. Out-of-state owners get full Montana registration, registered-agent setup, and Secretary of State filings.
We sit alongside your leadership team on contracts, transactions, acquisitions, disputes, and succession — with the continuity of a general counsel and the cost structure of outside counsel.
From the flat-fee formation on day one through the succession or sale decades later. These are the matters Flathead Valley business owners bring through our door most often — and the ones where getting it right matters most.
Flat-fee formation for Montana LLCs and corporations — entity selection, articles, operating agreements, bylaws, initial resolutions, and Secretary of State filings. We handle ongoing corporate housekeeping (annual meetings, minutes, amendments, dissolutions) and out-of-state companies registering to operate in Montana.
The handshake is cheap until it fails. We draft the commercial agreements that govern your customer, vendor, partner, and employment relationships — and we enforce or defend them when the other side decides the agreement doesn't apply anymore. Every contract is an insurance policy; a well written one is rarely the subject of an adverse claim.
Buying or selling a going concern is the single largest transaction most owners will handle. We structure and document asset purchases, stock purchases, mergers, and hybrid deals — handling the LOI, due diligence, definitive agreements, regulatory consents, and closing mechanics that protect the value being transferred.
When your business is buying, selling, or leasing commercial real estate, the business-law questions and the real-estate-law questions run together. We handle both sides: purchase/sale agreements, commercial leases, build-to-suit arrangements, tenant improvement terms, and the closings that bring them home.
Operating agreements, buy-sell agreements, shareholder agreements, voting rights, member withdrawal and addition, and the amendment machinery that keeps the company's governing documents aligned with how the business actually runs today. When the company is sued or audited, these are the documents that decide the outcome.
Every closely-held business eventually transitions — to children, key employees, a strategic buyer, or dissolution. We plan those transitions years in advance when possible, drafting the buy-sell triggers, insurance-funded valuations, and estate-integrated structures that keep the business intact through death, divorce, disability, or departure.
Your brand, your logo, your original work product, and your trade secrets are assets. We handle USPTO trademark and copyright applications, Montana trade-name registration, and the confidentiality agreements and assignment clauses that make sure the IP your team creates actually belongs to the business.
When contracts are breached, partners fall out, or competitors cross lines, we handle the litigation. We also handle the work that prevents it — mediations, negotiated resolutions, and demand-letter campaigns that end matters before the courthouse. Our goal is always to protect the company's cash, reputation, and operating time.
If yours isn't here, the answer is probably a short phone call away. We keep consultations focused so you leave knowing what your next move actually is — whether that's us or someone else.
For most closely-held Flathead Valley businesses, the starting point is a Montana LLC. It offers the same liability protection as a corporation with substantially less corporate formality, and it can elect to be taxed as an S-Corp when the owner compensation math supports that election. There are scenarios — multiple classes of owners, venture financing, specific industries — where a Montana corporation is the better starting structure. The conversation takes twenty minutes and usually settles the question.
We price formation as a flat fee so you know the full cost upfront — it covers entity selection advice, articles of organization, a customized operating agreement, initial resolutions, and the Secretary of State filing. Out-of-state owners registering to operate in Montana pay a separate flat fee that includes registered-agent setup. Call or email and we'll quote it the same day.
Yes. The operating agreement is what proves the LLC is a real entity separate from you — which is exactly the document a plaintiff's lawyer will look for when they try to pierce the corporate veil and reach your personal assets. It also governs succession if something happens to you, and it's the document your bank, your landlord, and any future investor will ask to see.
Letter of intent, diligence, definitive purchase agreement (asset or stock), regulatory consents and licensing transfers, a closing date with signed docs and funds flow, and the post-closing integration. We represent the buyer or the seller — never both on the same deal — and we work alongside your CPA and lender so the legal, tax, and financing pieces stay aligned.
A buy-sell is the agreement among co-owners that decides what happens when one of you dies, divorces, becomes disabled, or wants out. Without one, the departing owner's spouse, heirs, or creditors can end up as your new business partners — and your remaining owners have no agreed price or mechanism to buy them out. It's the single most-neglected document in closely-held Montana businesses, and the cheapest one to fix.
You can file the USPTO application yourself. Whether you should is a different question — most self-filings we see are refused on the first office action because the applicant didn't run a proper clearance search, chose the wrong class of goods and services, or filed on an in-use basis when they should have filed intent-to-use. An attorney-filed application costs more upfront and usually costs less by the end.
Pull the contract, document the damages, preserve the communications, and don't waive the breach by continuing to accept non-conforming performance. Then call us. Most vendor disputes settle before they become litigation — a well-drafted demand letter referencing the contract, the damages, and the remedies you're entitled to often resolves it in thirty days for a fraction of what litigation costs.
It starts with a conversation about where you want the business to go and who you want to carry it there. From that, we layer buy-sell triggers, insurance-funded valuations, gifting strategies, trust structures, and management-transition timelines that are coordinated with your estate plan. The earlier we start, the more options you have — and the fewer tax surprises your family ends up absorbing.
Yes. We routinely represent businesses throughout Kalispell, Whitefish, Bigfork, Lakeside, Somers, and surrounding Flathead County, as well as out-of-state owners registering companies in Montana. Most meetings happen by phone, video, or at our Columbia Falls office — whichever works for your schedule and deal timeline.
Always. Most business matters that walk through our door already have a trusted CPA, banker, insurance broker, or out-of-state counsel attached, and Chad is comfortable being the Montana piece of an existing team. We coordinate on closings, tax structure, 1031 timing, and entity conversions without trying to replace relationships that are already working.
Based in Kalispell, Montana — representing clients throughout Flathead County and the surrounding Northwestern Montana region.
Whether you're forming, growing, buying, selling, or just finally tackling the operating agreement you've been meaning to fix for three years, a focused first conversation is the fastest way to know what moves next — and what it will actually cost to get there.
